Saturday’s 5-Hour Energy 400 at Kansas Speedway saw little change in the Sprint Cup standings for most of the drivers who came into the race in the top 15 in the rankings.

But there was some significant changes from 15th to 35th, for sure.

While that may not seem overly important, au contraire. While race winner Jeff Gordon became the ninth different winner thus far in 2014, there are still seven places that need to be filled out for the expanded 16-driver Chase for the Sprint Cup format later this season.

And with 15 races remaining in the run-up to the Chase, it’s clear that those drivers who have gotten off to a poor start in 2014 are now playing catch-up in an effort to make the Chase if the final field includes entrants who will not have won a race by then.

Among the top 10 in the Cup standings, race winner Jeff Gordon opened up a 15-point lead over Matt Kenseth, who remains one of five drivers in that same top 10 without a win thus far in 2014.

Also climbing four positions and making himself close to being eligible for the Chase despite any wins was Kansas third-place finisher Kasey Kahne, who not only earned his best finish of the season, he also jumped from 20th to 16th in the overall standings.

But after Kahne, 14 drivers between 17th and 35th dropped at least one place in the standings, while only two drivers increased their rankings.

Let’s deal with the latter first: Aric Almirola climbed from 23rd to 21st, and in perhaps one of the most pleasant surprises of the weekend, Danica Patrick‘s career-best seventh-place finish Saturday allowed her to climb from 29th to 27th.

Also of note: While only 106 points separates points leader Gordon from 19th-ranked Ambrose, the dropoff becomes much more significant from there.

Stewart is now 126 points behind Gordon, Patrick is 181 points back, Kurt Busch is 183 points in arrears and every driver from Annett (30th) on back is more than 200 points behind Gordon.

Even with 15 races still remaining to make the Chase, it’s not too much of a reach to suggest that those drivers that are more than 200 points back are pretty close to being eliminated from Chase contention already.

The only way they’d likely change that is to win two or more races, but given what they’ve shown so far – with the exception of the elder Busch brother – the odds of those trailing drivers making a 180-degree turnaround seem more unlikely with each coming race.

Kurt Busch needs to hope that if he doesn’t get another win, there are several drivers who win more than one race. There are eight drivers winless so far in 2014 who won a race in the first 26 last year.
All are at 21 points ahead of him through 11 races. And I’m not even counting guys like Marcos Ambrose, Kyle Larson, or Clint Bowyer, who could pick up a win somewhere and not surprise anyone.

Yeah I thought for the wins to count towards the chase you had to be in the top 25 in pts too. Maybe it’s top 30? Can someone check that? Kurt to be safe should start trying to at least climb into the top 25 soon. Perhaps it’s time for him to points race a little. I very much doubt we’ll see 16 different winners before race 26 as I think it’s ever happened if I remember correctly. We will probably end up with 14 different winners and the last few spots will come down to points